Camellias
It’s still a bit early for most camellia’s but this week I noticed a large camellia beside the church in Clonakilty showing a profusion of pretty reddish pink flowers with yellow centres. It was beautiful and made me regret forgetting to bring my camellia with me on our last move. I forgot it because most of the year camellia’s don’t rank very highly in my admiration and wouldn’t make it on a favourite list in any way, shape or form.
Until February arrives and amid all the lacklustre sticky objects in the garden there’s the camellia, vibrant with colour and life, bright glossy green leaves contrasting against the glut of fat buds about to burst and the array of open flowers. In February the camellia skips all the way up to the top of the list.
Camellias are woodland shrubs that prefer shady placement and acidic soil conditions. Pruning should be done in spring after flowering has finished. For a pink camellia that grows well the “Donation” is often recommended. It flowers in late winter-early spring and grows to between four to eight meters. The japonica “Black tie” has gorgeous dark red double flowers between March and April and is a medium sized dense shrub. For a white camellia there is the japonica “Nobilissima” amongst others, with lovely double white blooms in mid winter to early spring.
Though they’re quite slow growing, some taking ten to twenty years to reach their mature height I still think I might get a few camellias and use them as screens. With those evergreen leaves they might be a good way to hide the compost heap, which is never that much of a pleasant sight, especially as the local wild life seem to enjoy dragging old rotting cucumbers or carrots out of it and leaving them scattered nearby. Yes, a few camellias could be very handy.
Snowdrops
An early flower that everyone must love unless they have a heart of stone is the snowdrop. This is my first year in a while being in a garden without snowdrops and although I have other bulbs (the daffodils I planted in October are nearing bloom) I still really miss the small groups of delicate white petals rising out of silvery leaves. Snowdrops can be tricky enough to grow and the bulbs can be expensive, especially if you’re a passionate snowdrop collector. If you want to start your collection soon you can buy snowdrops in the green in the next few weeks the traditional way snowdrops have been sold. You can buy snowdrops this way from websites like fieldofblooms.ie amongst others, from the ordinary to the unusual or you can wait for bulbs in late summer when sellers who have grown them in pots send them out. Snowdrops tolerate most soil conditions except overly wet ground and when planting don’t place them near plants that might smother the small bulbs.
We are hopefully getting a small tunnel in the next couple of weeks, which is really exciting. I’m picturing arm loads of tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and peppers in the summer, winter greens for this time of year and most importantly somewhere to hang the washing. I’ve made a start on preparing the site for the tunnel, tearing up the layers of grass is easier to do before the plastic goes on. After years of placing seed trays on every available windowsill it’ll be nice to have some real space to put them and maybe grow a lot more plants from seed this year. A great source for seeds that a friend recommended recently is seedaholics.com, a Westport based seed company with a mouth watering selection. My friend’s seed packets were promptly delivered and arrived with comprehensive information sheet on everything you need to know to grow them. I’m definitely planning on getting a few different things, the only problem will be choosing.